1. Technical Field
The present specification describes an ink refill kit, and more particularly, an ink refill kit for efficiently siphoning ink out of an ink bottle.
2. Discussion of the Background
An image forming apparatus, such as a copier, a printer, a facsimile machine, or a multifunction printer having at least one of copying, printing, scanning, and facsimile functions, typically forms an image on a recording medium (e.g., a sheet) using a liquid discharging device. The liquid discharging device includes a liquid discharging head (e.g., a recording head) for discharging liquid (e.g., an ink drop) onto a conveyed sheet. The ink is adhered to the sheet to form an image on the sheet.
A known image forming apparatus includes an ink cartridge for storing ink to be supplied to the liquid discharging device and an ink refill kit for supplying the ink to the ink cartridge. When the liquid discharging device consumes all the ink stored in the ink cartridge, the ink refill kit supplies fresh ink to the ink cartridge, so as to reuse the ink cartridge, thereby achieving reduction of running costs and effective utilization of resources.
FIG. 1 illustrates a related-art ink refill kit 100R. The related-art ink refill kit 100R includes an ink bottle 501R and a syringe 502R. The syringe 502R siphons ink 500 out of the ink bottle 501R and injects the ink 500 into an ink cartridge through a needle. However, the ink bottle 501R has a flat bottom surface, as illustrated in FIG. 1. Consequently, when a small amount of ink 500 remains in the ink bottle 501R, the ink bottle 501R needs to be lifted up and inclined so that the syringe 502R can reach the remaining ink 500. When a point of the needle of the syringe 502R does not reach the ink 500, the syringe 502R fails to siphon all the ink 500 from the ink bottle 501R, as illustrated in FIG. 1. If the ink bottle 501R is excessively inclined to almost fall over, the remaining ink 500 may spill from the ink bottle 501R.
In addition, when the syringe 502R is removed from the ink bottle 501R, the ink 500 adhering to an outside of the syringe 502R may adhere to a user's hand or to other peripheral devices.
Obviously, such insufficient suction of ink is undesirable, and accordingly, there is a need for a technology to efficiently siphon the ink from the ink bottle.